Frost/Nixon

Working at the top of his game as both a filmmaker and an actor’s director, Ron Howard has converted one of the most intriguing media events of the late 1970s—David Frost’s TV interviews with Richard Nixon three years after Nixon resigned as president—into memorable drama.

He’s working from a first-rate screenplay by Peter Morgan, an adaptation of Morgan’s own play—a success in London’s West End and on Broadway with the same actors, Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, in the roles of Nixon and Frost, respectively. The play was an intelligent piece of work, but riveting mostly for Langella’s dynamic, witty performance.